So, where can we find these profound thoughts? He wrote “The Road Ahead” in 1995. So, here’s the first chance beyond his emails and communication to his coworkers and friends that the public could read about what he was thinking. He followed up in 1999 with “Business @ the Speed of Thought. ” Of course Gates is profiled in the media quite often, but since that’s unpredictable when he’ll be quoted, there’s a few other ways to follow this very successful individual. Continue reading →

Ever since quitting smoking in 1st grade (yes, I smoked for a full week when I was 7 years old!), I’ve been an opponent of cigarettes. However, my folks run a convenience store and growing up, I’ve always seen prices of smokes up close since I handed over those “packs” to customers for a dollar plus and up. I saw this on Yahoo’s News & the images associated with the news and literally almost fell backwards in my chair. While I think this is a great thing that tobacco’s gotten very expensive, I was still a little floored at how much it now costs for a pack of cigarettes. I wonder though how much of this $10.50 is margin versus how much is actually the price going up. I realize that taxes and other tariffs account for a lot of this price, but just like gas prices, I wonder if the tobacco companies’ profits have grown in line with the prices of the products they sell.

On a side note, why is it that oil companies do make much more money when they’re gouging customers throughout the world with higher prices? I mean, while a barrel rises in price, why is it that the margins seem to increase as well for the leading oil companies in the world? It’s definitely not my parents or the many convenience store and gas station owners fault because their margins stay the same. I’ve seen it up close.

More specifically, I’ve been in the English as a Foreign Language (and as CDI or Chungdahm Learning likes to call it their patented ESL programs) industry for more than five years in Korea. I get questions constantly about how to enter the industry, who to choose for work and honestly what to do if interested in this field if you want work.

The other morning, I fell down the stairs in my apartment for the first time.

It wasn’t a pleasant fall either…

I slid down the last three or so stairs landing face down on the floor. I looked up thinking “Jeez, I had better be careful next time.” I then look down to my arm which is throbbing to find the following “rug burn” (I guess the best term I can pin down for now). It didn’t help to add it to the recovering cigarette burn to my arm (no, I’m not joining the ranks of all the smokers here, but in an attempt to pat the back of one of our newer teachers who was smoking (out on the town), I caught the end of his cigarette instead).

Anyway, now writing this, all I can think of the phrase we may use when getting older “I’ve fallen and I can’t get back up!” I hope I never reach this point. Continue reading →

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It’s definitely not a life crisis or emergency and may be something secluded to us here in the Asian region (oh, did I ever mention Asia will represent MOST OF THE WORLD soon if not already?), but it’s annoying. I’ve been waking up a bit early and going to sleep later most days since getting back from a quick trip abroad. My body clock isn’t back to normal, but I also have a million things on my mind and feel like I need to do. Anyhoo, in the midst of all the stress, I have to admit facebook is a nice stress release. Did I say “stress release?”

Today it’s a STRESSOR instead of a stress relief.

I’ve tried to log in for the past hour and all I get is a page that hangs. You can see from these images that I have the hourglass icon because it’s hanging or the page displays improperly because I can’t get anything back from the Facebook servers.

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Is it me? Or did I just land in the country most well known for “drama?”

Just visited my great friend Derek at his wedding in Hawaii with the beautiful bride Bonnie and great friends. It was seriously a beautiful wedding. Here’s the couple dancing to “Bella’s Lullaby” played by you would think a professional piano player, but rather by their niece “Rachel” who is AMAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZING!!!! (think of Will Ferrell yelling this like he did at the Harvard Commencement speech).

Can you imagine your facebook account shut down after years of uploading all your precious memories? Honestly, I also feel like Facebook is responsible for me being able to get in touch with so many past classmates and finding friends I haven’t talked to in years. How about all those chats via the walls? It’s like all those funny conversations basically disappeared?

Well, it may be a possibility. Facebook has grown too big for it’s britches. In this Businessweek article, Facebook is reported desperately seeking cash to finance it’s operations. At one time, the wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg was compared to William Gates, but now he may just become another dot bomb CEO if his management skills don’t start to step up. Perhaps it’s not just him that’s the question though at the company. I wouldn’t honestly want to be the Chief Operations Officer. The COO may be blamed for the lack of foresight in the traffic. I remember my days in Doubleclick where that job was literally impossible. It’s so hard to predict and the hardware costs are enormous. The bandwidth issues, the storage issues, the database issues… I would be stressed out. Continue reading →

Wow, but the other night was really (virtually) painful. It also showed me how much I am reliant on Google as a search tool. Basically, I think it was on the 13th when for some reason every time I did a search on Google, I got the following message returned to me:

we're sorry virus check spyware remover message from google

And an additional pop up message saying “TypeError x0 is undefined” as well attacks my browser like this:

What is the antonym of salutation?

This is totally random, but today I was trying to tell someone how I failed to end the email properly. Immediately, what popped into my head was “salutation” which of course means: “a word or phrase serving as the prefatory greeting in a letter or speech.” As you can see, it is how we start the letter vs. ending the letter.

I recently moved. I’ll definitely be posting about the experience here because it’s literally the 5th time I’ve moved here in Korea in my less than 3 years here and has to be the 100th time I’ve moved in the past 17+ years. Let’s just say I’m a professional mover at this point & no, I’m not the one moving the “stuff.” Rather, at least, I’m not the one who’s getting “paid” to move the stuff — I’ve been doing most of the paying.

Many of us work hard — very hard for that matter. We’re willing to put many hours into our work and at times are incredibly efficient. Howeer, many of our coworkers ask us “Is xyz done yet?” “Can you tell me where abc is right now?” We’re usually waiting for someone else in the big puzzle we call work to finish something that would let us do our job ultimately.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had some form of project management or task management software that helped us point out the true kinks or dependencies we have in our daily “to do” lists? Perhaps the ideal software could also help us understand how long the delays are and if the things (or people) who hold us up continue to do so & at what frequency? Perhaps, it will ultimately become an HR or rather a Human Resources tool which helps us understand who’s more efficient in an organization? Continue reading →

I was planning on staying up late, but wasn’t sure if I would be pulling another all nighter so soon after the last one on the 21st. Actually, the one 10 days ago was the first one I did successfully in years. It was sort of weird because I expected it to be a bit rougher at work towards the end of the day, but I actually pulled through like a trooper. Tonight though wasn’t planned at all.

Short of 2am, I ran to Homeplus to get some juice, bannanas and other groceries for the weekend. I barely made it before they closed. However, I didn’t take my keys which would normally not be a problem since I have one of those electronic door openers where you just have to enter a code. Lately though, the reliability of the “new fangled technology” has let me down. I think it’s the batteries and coincidentally, I bought batteries tonight, but to no avail since I couldn’t get into my place to replace the them in the lock. I visited the security officer on the first floor and he called some other service guy who came to my place 15 minutes later. One thing I’m incredibly proud of or thankful here in Korea is the speed in which you get service. In the states, I think I would of been waiting at least a few hours before someone would of came to try and help me out. The guy who tried to open my door gave it a really strong effort and even encouraged me to let him try a few more times before I told him to give up. He, along with most service professionals are always very friendly as well. However, he wasn’t able to get me back in my unit tonight. Continue reading →

Thanks to Facebook and Ashley Parks, one of our teachers in our company, I just learned about a website the online marketing crew over at Burger King concocted called “Subservient Chicken.” You get a website of a live guy (or it appears he’s live & it could be a gal for all we know) dressed up in a chicken who takes commands from online viewers. At first, I don’t know why, but I told it to “die.” Well, it didn’t do as asked. While waiting, I saw it scratching it’s head with it’s wing (hand, I mean). Continue reading →

Didn’t realize it at the time, but when I was promoted twice in a matter of 6 months from Instructor to Faculty Manager and to my current title of Director, I found out from reading some literature recently it can take a normal Korean 10+ years to obtain the title below me called “gwajang” — a mid-level management position. If it takes regularly 10+ years for that position and I’m in a title even higher and obtained it in less than 6 months, I should definitely be proud of my accomplishment. I guess my previous experience made it easier along with my age & supposed wisdom. Some days I neglect to realize all that I’ve done actually while here…